NY Gov. Cuomo Refuses to Grant Permits for Constitution Pipeline
You can’t see we didn’t predict this outcome: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made the political decision to not grant the Constitution Pipeline stream crossing permits, temporarily stopping the project from advancing. Cuomo’s lackeys at the totally humiliated and discredited Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) made the announcement on Friday, so-called Earth Day. Virulent anti-drillers erupted in spontaneous (and multiple) orgasms at the news. The DEC claims Williams, the builder of the Constitution, did not provide detailed information about pipe burial that the DEC had requested. This is a blatant, 100% lie. Gov. Cuomo is corrupt and is being led, as our friend Tom Shepstone points out, by the nose by Rockefeller money. Prosecutor Preet Bharara–are you paying attention? MDN now calls on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to bypass New York State, as is its right under the U.S. Constitution. FERC has the power to bypass Cuomo and the DEC and authorize the pipeline without NY’s stream crossing permits. Yes, hoops will need to be jumped through with various courts, but now is the time to permanently remove NY from such decision-making. The state has proven it is incapable of making independent, science-based decisions on the topic of oil and gas drilling and pipelines. Time to overrule the state and move on. Below we have the DEC’s pathetic political cover-up, along with various responses to the news…
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It was exactly a year ago (last Friday) that PTT Global Chemical announced their intentions to build an ethane cracker plant in Belmont County, OH (see 
Yet another anti has crossed the line into terrorism–and no, we don’t use that word lightly. Three surveyors working on the PennEast Pipeline in Holland Township (Hunterdon Township), New Jersey were approached by a man with a rifle. The man asked them if they were there working on the PennEast. When the 3-man crew responded “yes,” the man waved the gun in the air, shouting at them that he would stop the pipeline. It was a clearly a menancing threat to the men who were doing nothing more than a survey. Holland Township Police later arrested Lester Kinney Jr., charging him with “making terroristic threats and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.” The Sierra Club was quick to respond and distance itself from Kinney, making us wonder if Kinney is a member…
New York City’s largest utility company–Consolidated Edison Inc.–has formed a 50/50 joint venture to purchase ownership of pipelines and storage facilities from Crestwood Equity Partners (formerly Crestwood Midstream) in the PA and NY Marcellus region. ConEdison is ponying up $975 million for assets Crestwood says are really worth $2 billion. The newly formed jv, called Stagecoach Gas Services, will continue to be operated by Crestwood and includes four natural gas storage facilities (Stagecoach, Thomas Corners, Steuben and Seneca Lake) with a combined storage capacity of approximately 41 billion cubic feet; and three natural gas pipelines (MARC I, North/South and the East Pipeline) with a combined throughput capacity of 2.96 billion cubic feet per day. Here’s the details…
Talk about media bias. Yesterday over 200 people crowded into a meeting room at the Binghamton Holiday Inn for a rally supporting the Constitution Pipeline–a $683 million, 124-mile pipeline due to run from Susquehanna County, PA to Schoharie County, NY carrying Marcellus gas. The “newspaper of record” for Binghamton, the Press & Sun-Bulletin (P&SB), is so biased they didn’t run a single word covering the event in today’s edition. The P&SB’s so-called reporter who covers the drilling issue (actually an anti-drilling propagandist), Tom Wilber, apparently couldn’t be bothered to cover a major news story under his nose and part of his beat. The P&SB couldn’t even send an intern. Yes, the P&SB is completely in the anti-drilling tank and not in any way an actual news organization–they’re simply Democrat hacks towing the party line. Here’s what happened at yesterday’s meeting, from real news organizations that did show up…
Schlumberger is the largest oilfield services company in the world. Based in Houston, the company doesn’t do all that much work in the Marcellus/Utica region. The company issued it’s first quarter 2016 update yesterday. We typically don’t cover it here on MDN because they’re not heavily involved in our neck of the woods, but we did spot a reference to the Marcellus Shale in the update, which we’ve extracted for you below…
Anti-fossil fuel nuts in Massachusetts and other northeastern states are euphoric, actually orgasmic, at Kinder Morgan’s announcement yesterday that the company has suspended (not necessarily canceled) any further spending/time/effort on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline expansion from NY through MA, otherwise known as the Northeast Energy Direct (NED) project. Here’s what Kinder Morgan’s announcement means for natural gas customers, at least in certain parts of Massachusetts: If you build a new house, or a new business, and want to connect it to the natgas system in your community, forget about it. You can’t. There’s not enough gas. And if you’re an existing customer and want to convert your electric stove or electric hot water heater or oil furnace to a natgas alternative–don’t do it. If the local utility finds out, they’ll shut you off completely. Why? Not enough gas. So here’s something you anti fossil fuel freaks can really celebrate–you’ve just screwed yourselves, AND your neighbors too! A 2-for-1 deal…
Two shale industry members of last year’s ill-fated Pennsylvania Pipeline Task Force have pulled the curtain back to reveal what went on behind the scenes. The sausage-making. And it’s not pretty. Two important facts emerge for their disclosures: (1) most of the members of the task force didn’t (and still don’t) know their heads from their rear-ends when it comes to how the natural gas industry actually works, and (2) nothing useful will come from the 658-page report and its 184 recommendations. We previously predicted that outcome when we said, “Silly libs–they never learn. This initiative was never about actually getting anything done. It was always about the optics–to show that radical leftist Tom Wolf (and his lackey John Quigley) actually care about the hoi polloi” (see 
The proposed takeover/merger of Williams by Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) is better than a daytime soap opera. It was a long courting period before ETE finally cajoled, harangued, and eventually forced the board of Williams to agree to a merger/takeover. ETE’s billionaire CEO Kelsy Warren revealed he had been propositioning Williams for over six months–offering Williams $64 per share to buy the company, totaling $48 billion (see 
Yesterday Kinder Morgan provided a first quarter 2016 and rest-of-2016 update. It contained this earth-shattering news: “We reduced our growth capital backlog from $18.2 billion at the end of the fourth quarter 2015 to $14.1 billion at the end of the first quarter 2016. The reduction in our backlog was driven primarily by the removal of the Northeast Energy Direct (NED) Market project due to insufficient contractual commitments from customers in the New England market, and the removal of the Palmetto Pipeline project following unfavorable action by the Georgia legislature regarding eminent domain authority and permitting for petroleum pipelines.” See our lead story today about Kinder’s decision to mothball the NED project. As part of the update, Kinder brings us up to speed on the pipeline (and other infrastructure) projects currently being built, including several in the northeast U.S. that will impact takeaway capacity for Marcellus and Utica Shale gas…
In March MDN told you that Canadian midstream giant TransCanada is making a play to buy American Columbia Pipeline Group for $10 billion/C$13 billion (see 
“We’ll take one prepackaged bankruptcy to go.” That was the upshot of an announcement yesterday from oilfield services company Seventy Seven Energy (SSE)–the old Chesapeake Oilfield Operating unit that was spun into its own company a few years ago. In February MDN reported that for 2015 SSE revenue was down 45% and the company lost $221 million (see 
Big Green groups, including the nutty Sierra Club, the left-leaning Chesapeake Climate Action Network and the odious Earthjustice continue to pump money and lawyers and time into an effort to stop progress on Dominion’s construction of an LNG (liquefied natural gas) export facility in Cove Point, Maryland. As of March the Cove Point project was already a quarter done (see 
Somehow this bit of news escaped us a few weeks ago–perhaps because most of the impacts will happen in Oklahoma. Williams, the midstream giant that is currently being half-heartedly pursued by Energy Transfer Equity in a buyout/merger, is preparing for the eventual merger by laying off 10% of its workforce. Williams says they layoffs are due to “current market forces” and not because of the impending merger. Sorry–we don’t buy it. We suspect the layoffs have a great deal to do with trimming down before the company is eventually sold. Williams employs 6,700 people in North America and in late March they began dumping 10% (~670) of them. Some 100 of those layoffs are happening in the company’s Tulsa, OK headquarters. The others will come from across the country–including here in the Marcellus/Utica region…